"Let's say you bought a smartphone.

And after buying the smartphone and signing up for a data plan, you found that the phone and its network didn't work as well as you'd expected.

So you call up the big telecom firm that made the phone and built the network and say, "I'm pretty disappointed with the performance of your product. Any chance you're going to upgrade?"

"Well, here's the problem," the telecom says. "Not enough people bought that phone. So it's not worth our while to make it any better. Now, if a whole bunch of other people were to buy the same phone you have, we'd certainly think long and hard about laying out the cash to make the network competitive with networks in, say, Detroit or New York. But until that happens, you're stuck with the phone you've got.""